Jessica Badalana
speaker
1,485 appearances
10 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 5 Jun
Jessica Badalana’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
So they baked five cookies in all and they tried to figure out how long, really the experiment was like, how long does it take to bake a cookie in space in a special oven and what happens? So David, guess how long it took for the cookie to bake?
No, guess again.
Oh, that would be amazing. 130 minutes. What? It took more than two hours to bake a single chocolate chip cookie.
You've got time on your side. Where else are you going to go? Why did it take so long? I mean, that's a great question. The oven that Ian and Jordana created, it's not very large. It's sort of, you know, maybe the size of like a laptop, you know, 14 or 16 inches. It's a cylinder. And it is designed to hold and bake food in the microgravity environment. And it heats using electric heating elements.
So it pulls wattage from the space station. And Jordana described it to me sort of like a toaster oven or like an easy bake oven. I don't know if you ever had an easy bake oven. I did. Where like the light bulb is cooking things over a very long period of time. So that sort of helped me understand like more or less what is happening.
I think the first cookie that they baked, they baked for 25 minutes. That was not successful. It was like grossly underbaked. You know, the second cookie, it was like 75 minutes. And they said at the 75 minute mark, they could smell chocolate chip cookie. Finally, at 130 minutes with a 10 minute rest.
And they determined that that was the cookie that baked and seemed most like a cookie baked on planet Earth. And I say seemed because here's the worst part. They never got to taste the cookies. The astronauts didn't get to eat the cookies.
You can't just have an astronaut eat anything or do anything in outer space because, you know, what if they get sick? What if something bad happens? You know, I have an adverse reaction. Gosh, this is torture.
I know.
I know. And they said they were really just interested in, could you do it? Not so much in, is it delicious? Which is a real mind bender to me.
So they tell me that they know where one cookie is, which is on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center. But the whereabouts of the other space-baked chocolate chip cookies is unknown. I think we know. I'm imagining them like in a break room fridge or freezer somewhere, you know, that somebody has tucked them away. And to hear Ian describe it, they quote, lost track of the cookies.
We'll never know if a space cookie was delicious. But we do know that this experiment has sort of paved the way for future space baking, which is really pretty exciting. And it may become more and more relevant as space tourism picks up because I think there will be a demand for freshly baked cookies and beyond.
And so I asked Ian and Jordana like what they were working on next, what they're currently thinking of as their next space baking experiment. And Jordana told me that they're considering experimenting with sourdough starter in space. Oh, wow. I told them that we were very excited to hear about how Space Starter plays out. You know, what happens with fermentation in space.
And that, of course, you know, they have to use King Arthur flour when they mix up that first batch of Space Starter. I support it. The things you know. We are just about out of time for today. But before we go, I want to ask you one question. David, what are you baking this week? What's on your baking agenda?
Yeah, I love that bread. It's so hearty and delicious.
And you know what I also like to do with that sesame wheat? This is an idea that I got from Lucinda Scalaquin, the food author.
It's a great last name. She puts like thick planks of bread underneath her roasting chickens. you know so then you take the chicken off and you have this like schmaltz soaked toast and the sesame wheat is like particularly good for that wow maybe i'll do that yeah what are you baking this week jessica
So this week, I'm planning to bake a new-to-me recipe that's on our site for roti kanai, which is a South Asian flatbread that's stretchy and flaky and crispy and greasy in a good way. And they're not the fastest thing to make, so I feel like they're a nice thing to do when you have some time on the weekend and you want a little bit of a project.
You roll them out, they get folded, they get coiled, they get rolled, but then you have this... magnificent, flaky, crispy flatbread. One of the best foods ever created.
And it's so good. And that recipe comes from Thomas Pesce Duffley, who has a couple of restaurants out in Portland, Oregon. And he serves the roti there. I've eaten the roti there. It's so good. So if I can come close at home, that'll be exciting. And I'll just make a curry or something to serve with it. So that's my plan. I think you're going to get real close. I think it's going to be fun.
Showing 1461–1480 of 1,485 · page 74 of 75
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